The War Within the 1%

They come from good homes, good colleges, good families. They have trust funds or have cashed out at 45 — from hedge funds and IPOs, or from just knowing when enough is enough. Meet the millionaires of Occupy Wall Street.

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It's hard to tell who's who at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. But when I went down there not long ago, I discovered that beneath the bandannas and the body paint and the piercings, some of the occupiers are actually pretty rich.

Elspeth Gilmore is one of them. She grew up in a Greenwich Village townhouse, inherited a $1 million trust fund when she turned 21, and now not only wants to give her money away, she wants to help other people do it too. Gilmore works for Resource Generation, a nonprofit devoted to helping wealthy young people leverage their resources for social change. The philanthropic organization also helped start "We are the 1 percent, We stand with the 99 percent," a Tumblr page showing members of the so-called 1 percent holding declarations supporting the 99 percent, the moniker adopted by the Occupy Wall Street protesters. "I retired at the age of 46, and I will inherit $1 million which will not be taxed," one of them reads. "The 1% should pay their share. We stand with the 99%!"

"When I first inherited money I really distanced myself from it," Gilmore told me. "It felt confusing and overwhelming. I always had that money as a safety net. It wasn't until I was connected to Resource Generation and met other people who shared my commitment to change that I was able to own the fact that I had this resource."

William Rice, the policy director for Americans for Democratic Action, in Washington, DC, was similarly inspired. "All my life I have been in the top 1 percent," he said when we spoke over the phone. "Personal finance tends to be the last taboo. People will be open about their sex lives, but they won't talk about their finances. And it's nothing that I've been public about until now. Because the 99 percent were being open about their economic struggles, I felt it was incumbent upon me to reciprocate from a position of privilege."

Rice, who spent time at the Occupy DC protest, said the message he wants to convey is that the movement is not one group of Americans versus another group of Americans, but rather a battle of two ideas: "A more reasonable, humane economic outlook versus a more tired and used-up economic approach." A more balanced economy, he argues, will benefit everyone in the long run. "This isn't just altruism; it's a longer vision of what true prosperity is," he said. "True prosperity comes from a general raising up of incomes and living standards for everybody. Going in the opposite direction leads to an unstable society. To say 'I want to do my part' is a form of patriotism." It's also an idea that used to be called noblesse oblige.

To test Rice's claim and see if I would feel that same sense of patriotism, I spent an evening at Occupy Wall Street in the fall. I was dressed in a suit, complete with a pocket square and Hermès tie, and brought along Jacques Pépin's Payusnaya pressed caviar (125 grams of it, which goes for about $212), blinis, and Le Petit Ecolier biscuits. At the last second I abandoned my plan to share a couple of bottles of 12-year-old Balvenie because of the heavy police presence. I poured sparkling cider instead.

"Is that real caviar?" one protester asked. "I've never seen it before. Can I try some?"

"Of course," I said. "That's what it's here for." I distributed pages of a December T&C article, "Saints and Sinners," that showed a smarmy-looking Lloyd Blankfein, which the occupiers seemed to find amusing. It made me happy to contribute this bit of street theater to the cause — and to bring the accoutrements of the 1 percent to people who otherwise might not have the opportunity to taste a delicacy like caviar.

I started to see what drives people like Gilmore and Rice, and for one night I felt a measure of solidarity with them. I too have had advantages, having attended boarding school and an Ivy League college. Like Gilmore, I've always had the financial support of my family as a safety net. That night I met protesters who are going up against their own flesh and blood, like Justin, a college freshman from a well-to-do South Carolina family. His uncle, an ammunitions executive, is a self-avowed 1 percenter. "I don't agree with the 99 percent slogan at all," Justin told me, with the condition that his last name not be printed. "It just creates a line in the sand and dehumanizes the situation to make it seem as though the 1 percent aren't people. They're people just like everyone else." There are no doubt many other children of the 1 percent in Zuccotti Park. Leah Hunt-Hendrix, for instance, attended the protest. She's the granddaughter of H.L. Hunt, the late Texas oil tycoon and onetime richest man in America. "This is a very important moment in history," Rice said. "Some very basic questions are being raised about the nature of society, the role of government, the sort of responses we owe one another. Occupy Wall Street is bringing up all the issues everyone should be willing to address."